MIRACLE BELIEFS ARE UNNECESSARY

Miracles are events that seem to be against nature or the way natural law usually runs. In other words, they cannot be explained by nature. Examples are the Blessed Virgin Mary appearing to children, the unexplained cure of incurable illness, blood coming out of nowhere on Catholic communion wafers, the sun spinning at Fatima in Portugal in 1917 and most importantly Jesus Christ coming back to life after being dead nearly three days. It is thought that only God can do these things.

Belief in miracles is not going to give you self-confidence. It is not going to put bread on the table. It is not going to help your flu. The stress on miracles in religion is disgraceful and a waste of energy. It shows a tendency to prefer fantasy to fact. Even if miracles do happen and are real, believers suffer that tendency. You can live a humanitarian life without believing in miracles. Some of the people adored today as saints claimed they had lost their faith meaning they ceased to believe in miracles.

If you would like comfort that does not mean miracles are needed. Nobody dies of depression because miracles don't happen or because they don't believe in them.

You don't need to believe in miracles. Jesus said you do but he was being a sectarian dogmatist.

Do you need not to believe? Maybe. It would be safer. There would be nobody going to fake shrines and mediums and wasting money on magic books if nobody believed in miracles. Believing in miracles is unsafe.

Hypothetically, let us assume we need to believe in some miracles at least. The only thing that can tell us that we need to is the evidence for the miracle. It has to be good enough. We need to believe not because it is a miracle but because the evidence is persuasive. We believe for the evidence not the miracle. We believe because of the evidence not the miracle.

If miracles are unnecessary, belief in miracles is unnecessary too. Belief is far more unnecessary.

If miracles are not that important or unnecessary, it follows then that if we say the evidence will never be good enough to justify believing we are saying it because we are sensible and not because we are unfairly biased against the supernatural. And religion delights in accusing sceptics of being unfair and biased.



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